Techmeme: Chinese food delivery service Meituan Dianping beats estimates with sales of $2.4B, net loss of $221M; Meituan stock rose 9.7%, taking its market cap to $100B+ (Zheping Huang/Bloomberg)

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May 26, 2020, 1:20 AM

Top News

Ryan Broderick / BuzzFeed News:

An in-depth look at the baseless conspiracies attempting to turn Bill Gates into the pandemic's villain, widely shared on Facebook and YouTube — After months of conspiracy-mongering, people around the world are demanding Gates be arrested for crimes against humanity. Here's how things got so bad.

More: Yahoo News, ZDNet, CNET, and Business Insider

Tweets: @drericding, @leakthompson, @oneunderscore__, @raymuzyka, @katereports, @dtunkelang, @quinnemmett, @slpng_giants, @shannonwoodward, @walldo, and @jason_kint

See also Mediagazer

Mark Scott / Politico:

With GDPR's two-year anniversary today, the Irish Data Protection Commission is under pressure to act, amid doubts about the agency's enforcement ability — Ireland's Data Protection Commission is under pressure to act, and act soon. — Facebook's European headquarters in Dublin.

More: Noyb, CNET, Reuters, TechSpot, CdrInfo.com, and EURACTIV.com

Tweets: @maxschrems, @maxschrems, @maxschrems, @rossjanderson, @markets, and @kaminskimk

Stephanie Bodoni / Bloomberg:

Privacy advocate Max Schrems criticizes Irish data protection authority in an open letter for the slow pace of its probes into Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp

More: Politico, beuc.eu, Telecoms.com, noyb, The Irish Times, The Irish Times, Silicon Republic, Computer Business Review, and Bloomberg

Tweets: @maxschrems, @nicholasvinocur, and @jason_kint

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:

Google says ~70% of all serious security bugs in Chrome, largely written in C/C++, are memory safety flaws, after analyzing 912 security bugs fixed since 2015 — Google software engineers are looking into ways of eliminating memory management-related bugs from Chrome.

More: TechSpot and The Chromium Projects

Tweets: @ryanaraine, @epakskape, @robdaemon, @0xcharlie, @a_cowley, and @campuscodi

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:

Thailand's largest cell network, AIS, has pulled a database offline that was leaking billions of real-time internet records on millions of Thai internet users — Thailand's largest cell network AIS has pulled a database offline that was spilling billions of real-time internet records on millions of Thai internet users.

More: SlashGear and Bangkok Post Website. Tweets: @campuscodi

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

Wikimedia's board votes to adopt a formal moderation process, with policies drafted by the end of 2020, to deal with harassment and other “toxic” behavior — Trustees say it hasn't done enough to stop abuse — Wikipedia plans to crack down on harassment and other “toxic” behavior with a new code of conduct.

More: BBC, SiliconANGLE, Wikimedia Foundation, MediaNama, and Reclaim The Net

Tweets: @ekp and @wikimedia

Ben Smith / New York Times:

How services like Cameo and Substack have opened up new ways for prominent media figures and journalists to make a living from smaller audiences — With short videos and paid newsletters, everyone from superstars to half-forgotten former athletes and even journalists can, as one tech figure put it, “monetize individuality.”

Barton Gellman / Wired:

Book excerpt looks at NSA's Big Awesome Graph initiative, an attempt to map people's social networks out of an enormous trove of intercepted communications — Edward Snowden revealed the agency's phone-record tracking program. But thanks to “precomputed contact chaining,” that database was much more powerful than anyone knew.

Tweets: @manhack and @blackvaultcom

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:

Sensor Tower data: TikTok and Chinese twin app Douyin topped the charts globally for in-app purchases in April, generating $78M, up 10x from April 2019 — - ByteDance's popular video-sharing platform keeps rising — Douyin, TikTok's China version, contributed 87% of revenue

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:

Chinese food delivery service Meituan Dianping beats estimates with sales of $2.4B, net loss of $221M; Meituan stock rose 9.7%, taking its market cap to $100B+ — - CEO Wang Xing warns of persistent pressure over 2020 — Hotel and travel services hit by virus fears, travel curbs

More: TechCrunch

Josh Taylor / The Guardian:

Australia's COVIDSafe tracking app has faded into near-irrelevance, falling far short of a target to reach 40% of Australians — The PM told Australians in April the contact tracing app was key to getting back to normal but just one person has been identified using its data

More: ZDNet. Tweets: @fabiochiusi, @jilltxt, @eevblog, @true_mxp, @julian_plummer, @deemadigan, and @mukeshkapila

Elise Favis / Washington Post:

Chicago-based game studio Level Ex is updating two titles, widely-used by medical professionals to hone their skills, to include COVID-19 content — For the last five years, Chicago-based studio Level Ex has been making mobile games to help medical professionals hone their skills.

Tweets: @launcherwp

Anna Baydakova / CoinDesk:

Telegram says it is withdrawing its appeal after a court decision backed the SEC and will no longer be fighting the ban on its blockchain token project — Telegram has thrown in the towel in its court battle against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and will no longer …

More: SiliconANGLE. Tweets: @icodrops and @coindesk

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From Mediagazer

Associated Press:

President Trump signed an EO on May 1 instructing CPB and other agencies to cut federal funding for NPR and PBS, alleging “bias” in the broadcasters' reporting

Washington Post:

After VOA director said staff can begin a “phased return”, an appeals court stays the preliminary injunction that allowed VOA and USAGM staffers to go back

Sean Burch / The Wrap:

The LA Times Guild says 14 of its members have been laid off, or 6% of its newsroom staff, the third round of newsroom layoffs at LAT in as many years

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More News

Ryan Tracy / Wall Street Journal:

FCC may move ahead with a $16B plan to boost rural broadband access, even without a clear picture of service gaps, as ISPs' coverage data lacks granularity

Tweets: @wsj, @keydet89, @bryanalexander, @wsj, @anthonydb, and @drewfitzgerald

Krystal Hu / Reuters:

Forescout Technologies sued Advent International last week, after the PE firm pulled out of a deal announced in Feb. to buy the IoT security company for $1.9B

More: CyberScoop

Hayden Field / MIT Technology Review:

Self-driving car companies, whose test fleets are grounded due to the pandemic, are finding new uses for old data through detailed data labeling and 3D mapping

Tweets: @alexandr_wang and @haydenfield

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

VergeSense, which offers AI-powered workplace sensors for occupancy tracking, raises $9M led by Allegion Ventures, as offices restructure for social distancing

Tweets: @tariqkrim

John Markoff / New York Times:

Computer scientist Ben Shneiderman argues against the move towards full robotic automation, saying such moves absolve humans of ethical responsibilities

Tweets: @dtunkelang, @edyson, @nytimesbusiness, @jhagel, @cigitalgem, and @ctricot

Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:

Germany-based Arculus raises €16M Series A to help manufacturers, from Audi to Siemens, upgrade assembly lines with its “modular production platform”

Earlier Picks

Mary-Ann Russon / BBC:

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre is conducting a new review into the impact of allowing Huawei telecom equipment to be used in British 5G networks

More: TechRadar.com and Neowin. Tweets: @tleehumphrey

Kira Herzog / CNBC:

Sensor Tower: first-time downloads of the top 20 mental wellness apps in the US hit 4M in April, up 29% from Jan.; experts say therapy apps need more oversight

More: TechSpot

Ron Miller / TechCrunch:

BetterCloud, which helps companies manage their SaaS usage, raises $75M Series F led by Warburg Pincus, bringing its total raised to $187M

Tweets: @baincapvc and @flybridge

Reuters:

Israel limits the involvement of its security service in COVID-19 cellphone-tracking to special cases “where epidemiological investigation proves insufficient”

More: Engadget. Tweets: @zackwhittaker

Lily Hay Newman / Wired:

Jailbreaking team Unc0ver has released a tool that will jailbreak most versions of iOS from 11 to 13.5; the tool makes use of a 0-day flaw in the iOS kernel